


tomorrow will be kinder

by orphan_account



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Incest, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1916085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Akane was his own dreamcatcher; she kept the nightmares at bay.</i> Akane, Aoi, and the years leading up to the second Nonary Game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tomorrow will be kinder

**Author's Note:**

> takes place pre-999 (or, the second nonary game). CONTENT WARNING for sibling incest.

They don’t speak about it right away.

They return to their tiny apartment with a notice about their overdue rent shoved under the door. A flower that Akane had picked before the Game had begun to wilt, and the neat layer of dust coating what little furniture they had is the only indication that they’d been gone. 

For the first few days, Aoi strives for normalcy. He tries to settle them into their old routine, but everything about it is stilted and fragile, and he feels like a fool for trying to pretend. Nothing is the same, not when he feels Akane slipping away from him every day, not when he hears the beeping of the timer in his dreams and in his waking hours, not when he only has to close his eyes to see the ship all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

Every night, Aoi has nightmares about that moment. Akane, shouting his name as Hongou drags her into the incinerator. Akane, banging at the door and begging to be let out. Akane, sobbing as the countdown begins. 

Sometimes, the ending is different: the countdown reaches zero, her piercing scream echoing through the building, and he is left with only her charred remains. In this nightmare, he knows how the ash feels against his fingers, feels the lingering heat burn into his flesh, knows the bone-wracking agony that consumes him whole.

When he wakes, his mind is filled with a heavy fog, and he struggles to recall the facts. The most important one is this: Akane is alive. 

Later, he slips into her room, needing to see her with his own eyes. Aoi has only ever trusted his senses to tell him the truth.

She wakes and he thinks he can see the same hazy confusion in her eyes before her gaze settles on him, and she smiles sleepily. 

“Aoi,” she says. His fingers tangle with her own, her pulse beating steadily under his thumb. Just like that, she anchors him to the present.

 

 

 

 

 

He starts sleeping in her room.

At first, he kept both their doors open, so he could hear and keep an eye on her. But the open doors had made him feel vulnerable, too unsafe despite the multiple locks he’d installed on the front door. So he’d pulled a futon next to hers instead, and she hadn’t questioned it. 

His heart settles, just a little.

 

 

 

 

 

Akane tells him everything: how she died a thousand times over, and how she’s living in this one improbable future. It is an impossibility, a time paradox in the making, but everything suddenly makes _sense_. 

“I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t sure. But now, looking back, and with the nightmares…” Akane trails off at the look on his face, at the realization there that all his worst dreams have and could come true.

He doesn’t flinch away from the hand that comes to cup his face, her thumb brushing against the rigid line of his mouth.

“There has to be another one.” Nine more people to suffer the same as they did—seven, excluding them. The kick of his conscience is a small one, negligible at most. 

“Yes. If there isn’t—”

“I won’t let that happen,” he vows fiercely. “That isn’t an option.”

Aoi watches Akane smile with the knowledge that there are no lines either of them won’t cross to keep the other safe.

 

 

 

 

 

They stop sleeping in the same room as time passes.

His protective fury calms to quiet embers as he grows older, no less dangerous, but the need to keep a constant eye on her less. Aoi never minded having her next to him. Akane was his own dreamcatcher; she kept the nightmares at bay.

He isn’t sure when things shifted. There was a gradual awareness between them that hadn’t been there before, and then she was suddenly asking for privacy, for space, because _God, Aoi, I’m_ sixteen _, I don’t need you to babysit me anymore_.

They settle into their separate rooms, but she leaves the door open.

 

 

 

 

 

Her mouth slides against his and he thinks, _this is so fucked up_ , even as his hands slide down to her hips, even as he kisses her back, no intention of stopping. 

“ _Akane_ ,” he says, forcing himself to break away for one sane moment, breathing hard. A dark flush marks her cheeks and she just looks at him, lips parted, waiting. 

She tilts her head to the side. “No?”

He exhales a ragged breath, closes his eyes. Then he opens them and pulls her in to kiss her again.

 

 

 

 

 

They fight more often, now. Their plans are seven years in the making and they are both on edge with anticipation, because it is _so_ _close_ , and he can’t bear the thought of failure. 

He loves her to the point of agony—to be without her is death, is an impossibility. But on some days, that same love is a chokehold. Aoi has never regretted each step they’d taken toward this. He has sometimes wondered, though, of the different lives they could have led. He thinks about Akane often—not this one, with the sharp smile and steely eyes, but of the woman his little sister would have been. Aoi can’t reconcile the image that comes up with the person she is now, and maybe that’s for the best.

Aoi still loves her. He has never blamed her for any of this.

 

 

 

 

 

The sound of Junpei’s name is a lit match to his short fuse. 

Aoi won’t deny that Junpei is important to Akane in a way that transcends time itself, and Aoi will forever be grateful of how he saved her. But some petty part of him hates the smile on her face that only appears whenever she speaks of Junpei, the irrational jealousy grating on his nerves. 

For him, there has only ever been her. He knows better, though, to expect the same out of her; Akane has always done what she wanted, regardless of who or what stood in her way. To keep her to himself would be to smother her, and he knows better than to try. Akane is a force all on her own. He loves that part of her, too.

So Aoi tries to calm down and tells himself that Junpei is a good man at the same time he thinks, _fuck_ Junpei.

It is when Akane narrows her eyes at him and says, “What is your _problem_?” that he realizes he’d said that aloud.

Aoi forces a breath out, jaw clenching. “It’s nothing,” he says, pushing away from the table. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Aoi.” Her chin resting on his shoulder, arms wrapping around his stomach. She traces circles with her fingers. “Talk to me.”

He turns around instead, pinning her against the counter with his arms on either side of her. Her eyes are wide as he presses closer, but she does not push him away. Aoi distracts himself in unraveling her braid, running his fingers along her bare shoulder, brushing a kiss along the side of her jaw, at her neck. Her breath stutters, then exhales slowly.

“You know I’m going to make it,” she says, a fierce light in her eyes. “We’ll get through this.”

Aoi closes his eyes as she cups his face in her hands. “I know.”

“But I can’t—I can’t do this without you, Aoi, you have to know that—” Sudden uncertainty, so unlike her that everything in him stills before he pulls her into a hug.

“Shit, Akane. I’m not gonna leave. It’s just,” he decides for honesty and admits, “hearing you talk about Junpei annoys the hell out of me.”

She blinks slowly. Then her lips stretch into a grin, and she laughs outright at him. Cheeks flushing, he ducks his head as she says something along the lines of _childish_ and _ridiculous_ until he tickles her sides to make her stop, her laughter turning into shrieks.

When he is in the second Nonary Game, he will close his eyes, remember this moment, and centre himself.

 

 

 

 

 

Akane has always been the charmer, so she is the one who networks and sits in meetings while Aoi researches and compiles information. He _can_ be friendly when he wants to be, but Akane is good at drawing people to her. Between the two of them,  Akane is the more dangerous one; they never see her lethal edge until she lets them. Aoi, on the other hand, wears his anger in the hard edges of his smile.

Akane steps out of the boardroom, heels clacking a sharp rhythm. “All done,” she says, smiling at him. Some people mistake him for her bodyguard, but they both know she doesn’t need one. The gun strapped to her thigh and the taser in her purse are only two of the ways she knows how to incapacitate anyone who dares come after her.

He looks at the tight edges of that smile and frowns. “What—”

“Later,” she cuts him off with a glance, resting her hand in the crook of his elbow.

 

 

 

 

 

She comes into his room that night.

It’s become something of a promise between them to never let each other suffer through their nightmares alone. But it isn’t a nightmare that brings her to his room this time; she mutters angry curses at people whose names Aoi recognizes from her afternoon meeting. “They can go fuck themselves,” he agrees, his mouth curving into a smile against her skin. He loves seeing her like this, all riled up and flushed and undone.

When she goes quiet, he raises his head, hand pausing in its ascent up her shirt. “You want me to do something about it?”

She smiles a little at that, and the tension in his shoulders eases. “I’m handling it. Besides,” she clasps her fingers together behind his neck, “I know you have my back.”

“Always,” he says, and pulls her to him.

 

 

 

 

 

They plan the next Nonary Game meticulously, leaving no detail out, no margin of error. What will happen when they are in the game itself will be up to chance, but Akane has caught glimpses of the future, known which parts to place where. Saving her life—getting Junpei to the final stage—is of the utmost priority, but vengeance came a close second.

Now, the first stage of the operation is merely days away.

Aoi stares at the picture of the four men, burning the image into his mind. He remembers Hongou the most clearly.

Neither of them will be the one to pull the trigger when the time came, but they will put the weapon into his hands. It is a necessary evil, Akane had decided.

For himself, for Akane, and for all the other children.

 

 

 


End file.
